Stop it. Stop it! The crowbar shook, even though he squeezed it with both hands. You’re scaring yourself for no reason. There’s nothing here! Rookward House is empty!
A door on the ground floor slammed. Guy leapt and bit down on a yelp. He teetered at the top of the stairs and, for a second, thought he might fall. Then he stumbled back and pressed his shoulder blades to the wall.
The whispers returned. They rattled amongst the lower floor, seeming to bounce at him from every direction, their tone urgent and demanding. Guy didn’t give fear a second chance to freeze him. He darted down the stairs, keeping his footfalls as light as he could while his heart beat a tattoo against his ribs. He skidded to a halt in the foyer. A floorboard shifted inside the guest room. Guy advanced towards it, crowbar held ahead of himself, and used a foot to nudge the door open.
The space’s dimensions seemed wrong with half of its carpet torn up. The moonlight helped create a surreal pall over the area, distorting colours and stretching shadows. The wood-and-bronze mantelpiece clock had frozen again: 12:15.
Behind Guy, someone inhaled. Fear burst through his nerves like electricity as he swivelled. A woman stood in the doorway, moonlight flashing across her wild eyes as long hair flowed around her face. She opened bloodless lips, and a shriek deafened him.
Guy screamed, as well. He swung the crowbar. His aim was poor; it missed the woman and thwacked into the wooden doorframe. Her shriek rose in pitch, then she staggered back from him, arms raised over her head, as she cried, “Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!”
Guy lurched back as a gangly figure appeared beside the girl. Something clicked, then an explosion of light engulphed him. He blinked against the torch’s beam as the figures, which had appeared inhuman in the moonlight, resolved into teenagers.
“What the hell, man!” The boy was tall and thin, and too-long hair hung around his twisted face.
“What the hell yourself!” Guy brandished the crowbar at them, but he didn’t put much force into the gesture. They weren’t the terror-effusing phantoms his mind had conjured; they were only kids, who were clearly afraid of him. “What are you doing in my house?”
“I thought it was empty!” The girl’s face was sheet white. She straightened her back and gripped the lapels of her jacket. “It-it’s always been empty! Since forever!”
Guy blew out air through his nose and let his shoulders slump. He waved towards the boy. “Get that torch out of my eyes. You scared me.”
“You scared us, man.” The beam shifted to point at the ground. Its refracted light put strange shadows over their faces. “And you nearly brained my girlfriend.”
“It was my fault.” She spoke quickly and pulled at her partner’s sleeve. “I came up behind him by accident. Come on, let’s go. Sorry, Mister, we didn’t mean to disturb you. We wouldn’t have come if we’d known someone was staying here.”
Guy put the crowbar on the fireplace’s mantelpiece. He’d been holding it so tightly that his fingers ached when he flexed them, so he ran them through his hair to give them something to do. Clarity was starting to filter through his sleep-dazed, fear-fogged mind. “It’s fine. Hang on, you don’t have to run off straight away. How’d you get here?”
The boy glared at his friend. She squared her shoulders and answered. “We drove, of course. Didn’t you hear our car?”
“I was asleep. It must be well past midnight.”
“Nearly three in the morning, yeah.”
Guy narrowed his eyes at the pair. They were bundled in warm jackets and thick pants, but other than that, they made an odd couple. The boy was sallow and surly, but his friend seemed to smile easily, even though the expression was more nervous than happy. She was short but held a bouncy kind of energy that made her seem bigger than she was. In the dim light, it was possible to mistake her long, fine hair for Savannah’s. The idea tightened Guy’s throat, and he tried not to focus on it. “Okay, it’s even later than I thought. That leads into my other question. What are you two doing here at three in the morning?”
The girl answered, her tone a little defensive. “We were curious. About the legends. I wanted to see if there was anything left of Amy.”
Amy. The name was familiar, and it felt significant, but Guy struggled to place it. He raised a hand to stop the teens from backing down the hallway. They were technically trespassing, but now that his heart was slowing and the adrenaline was subsiding, he realised he didn’t want them to leave. If they did, he would be alone again, just him and the house, sitting in darkness until morning. He suppressed a shudder. “Hold up a moment. I want to hear about that. Why don’t you stay a bit? I’ll make some coffee.”
They looked at each other. The girl’s eyes shone with excitement, but her partner’s face twisted.
Guy chuckled. “It’s fine. I can promise you I’m not crazy. I inherited this place. I’m doing some repairs before putting it on the market. You said something about legends?”
“We can stay,” the girl said, poking her partner’s arm. “Right?”
He shrugged and scowled. “Whatever.”
“Guy.” He extended a hand.
The girl shook it, her grin stretching her cheeks. “I’m Tiff. And this is Blake. I’d love something warm to drink.”
Chapter Fourteen
The gas lamp created a bubble of light in the dining room. Guy had only brought one mug for himself, so he hunted through his supplies for substitutes as the pot of water boiled over the gas stove.
“I should have known someone was here.” Tiff sat at the table, arms folded in front of herself, as she watched Guy. “The gate was missing. I just figured the government had finally taken it away or something.”
Guy found a glass measuring jug and a small saucepan. They weren’t classic cup material, but he figured they’d do in a pinch. He infused some laughter into his words so that Tiff would know he wasn’t irritable. “And the building supplies everywhere didn’t give it away?”
She shrugged, appearing wholly unashamed. “I wanted to explore the place with the lights off. We really couldn’t see much.”
“Uh-huh.” Guy blinked at Blake, who leaned far back in his chair with his arms crossed. He didn’t seem happy. Guy was struck by the impression that the expedition hadn’t been his idea, and he’d only gone along with it because he was hoping to get lucky. Guy’s presence had tanked that possibility, and he was sulking. “So, tell me again why you’re exploring Rookward? Some sort of bravery test?”
“I guess you could call it that.” Tiff picked at a splinter poking out of the tabletop. “You know this place’s history, right?”
“’Fraid not. My mother inherited it, but she forgets things easily.” Like forgetting she owned a house in the first place. The pot boiled, so Guy spooned instant coffee into the containers and doled out the water. He passed the mug to Tiff, gave her boyfriend the measuring jug, and kept the saucepan for himself. “You said a name. Amy. Who is she?”
“Pure evil, if you believe the legends.” Tiff grinned and wrapped her hands around her mug.
She seemed to have a flair for the dramatic, and Guy thought she was enjoying the attention. That suited Guy—he had no chance of sleeping again that night, and a good story would help pass the time until dawn. He leaned back in his chair and nodded for her to continue.
“The story’s pretty well-known in our area, but I guess it didn’t spread far. So basically, there was this family living here, right? Parents and their three kids. And this woman, Amy, knew the father from work. She fell in love with him and must have been at least a bit crazy, because she started stalking him and was obsessed with being his wife. She lived in the forest like a wild animal, watching the house and sometimes digging up the garden or leaving messages. The family called the police, but the police couldn’t find her even though they scoured the woods multiple times, and eventually gave up. So the father—”
“Thomas,” Guy interjected.
“Right, Thomas, he didn’t want to leave h
is family alone with Amy, so he stopped going to work. They holed up in their house and kept the doors locked at all times. They figured Amy would eventually have to give up; she’d starve or freeze at night or something. But she didn’t. It went on for weeks, gradually escalating, until the family decided they had to move.” Tiff sipped her drink and crinkled her nose. “This is gross.”
“Sorry. I’m roughing it. There’s, uh, water, or…” He narrowed his eyes at them. “Are either of you old enough to drink?”
They exchanged a glance. “Sure.”
“Of course.”
Liars. Guy shook his head as he tried to hide a grin then rose to dig through his boxes. I wasn’t much different when I was their age.
Tucked next to a bag of rice was a bottle of brandy he’d been saving for either a celebration or a pity party, depending on how his time at the house went. He opened it, poured a measure into his saucepan, then pushed the bottle across the table. “Help yourselves.”
Blake, his glare challenging Guy to call him out, took a swig straight out of the bottle. He passed it to Tiff, who sniffed it, then dribbled less than a teaspoon into her mug. She swirled the mix experimentally.
“So…” Guy tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “The family left. Do you know where they went?”
Tiff looked up. “Oh, no, they didn’t leave. That’s the whole point of the story. Amy must have heard about their plans somehow. She broke into the house and murdered them.”
Guy’s inhale caught in his throat. He had to cough to clear it. “Murdered? All of them?”
“Mm-hm.” She sniffed her mug but didn’t drink from it. “That’s why Rookward is infamous. Amy went through the building and stabbed the family one by one. And do you want to know the worst bit? They weren’t discovered for, like, four days. The house was so far from town, y’know, no one made deliveries to it or anything. People didn’t think anything was wrong until the mother didn’t return her friends’ phone calls for a couple of days.”
Guy ran a hand over his mouth. He felt as though the ground had fallen out from under him. The idea that the family was dead had occurred to him—but in a distant way. He’d imagined them involved in a car accident or passing away in hospital from an epidemic. Not murdered.
An image rose in his mind: the clothes in the upstairs wardrobe saturated with dark stains. Guy frowned. He didn’t remember the fabric being cut.
Tiff’s eyes glittered, and the corners of her mouth twitched up. “It took four days for the police to show up. Amy stayed in the house the entire time. They say she dressed the family up in different outfits and dragged their bodies through the rooms for dinner, bedtime, play time—all while they were decaying.”
The wooden dining table under Guy’s hands suddenly felt repulsive. He pictured the family of corpses arranged around it, plates and cutlery set out for them, their dead, bulging eyes unfocussed and heads lolled against their shoulders. “You’re making this up. You’ve got to be.”
“She’s not.” Blake snorted and reached for the brandy bottle again. “Everyone knows the story. Some people even kept newspaper clippings from when it all went down. They found bloodstains in the chairs, in the beds, even in the car. She took them out for a drive. She was crazy, man.”
When Blake set the bottle back onto the table, Guy snatched it up and poured more brandy into his coffee. Then he lifted the saucepan and took a gulp. The alcohol burnt as it went down, but he knew it would dull some of the ache in his chest. “That’s messed up. Did she go to jail?”
“Nope.” Tiff propped her chin up on her folded hands, elbows balanced on the table. “Apparently, she’d been expecting the police. She was in the TV room, freshly dead. She’d heard the cars coming, sat on the couch next to her beloved, and cut her own throat. They say, when the police found her, she was smiling.”
Blake reached out for the bottle. Guy handed it back then scratched his fingers through his hair. He felt dirty, not just on the outside where Rookward’s grime had been building up, but on the inside, too.
He understood why his grandfather hadn’t done anything with the house after inheriting it. Perhaps he’d even tried to sell it but couldn’t find any buyers. So he’d just hidden the deeds in a box of receipts in the attic and left it to rot.
Tiff sipped at her coffee and grimaced. “You got any milk for this?”
“Sorry, no fridge.” Guy, still in a fugue of thought, shook his head. “Well, I mean, there is a fridge—but there’s no power.”
“You can’t get it turned on?”
“No. The original family had a generator around the back, but it’s long dead. I don’t think the house ever got hooked up to the grid, so to speak.” Guy shrugged and gulped more of his coffee-brandy cocktail. “Just one of the things I’ve got to figure out before I sell this place.”
“I guess you must be related to the family that lived here, huh?” She tilted her head to the side, her long hair shimmering in the golden light. “Sorry if I was being insensitive.”
“No, it’s fine. If they were relatives, I didn’t know them. This was the first I’d heard of… well, any of this.” Guy cracked a smile. “I’m not planning to stay here, anyway. The idea was to fix it and sell it. Then my mother and I can move somewhere new and start a fresh life.”
“Why’re you moving?” Tiff pushed her cup aside and blinked at him. “Why not spend the money on a holiday to Europe or something? That’s what I’d do.”
Guy swallowed a chuckle. “I don’t really fit into my town anymore. I need to go somewhere no one knows me.”
“Oooh.” She bent forward, and mischief narrowed her eyes. “Those are the words of a social pariah. What’d you do? Must be bad to make people hate you. This girl at my school had an affair with a married teacher, and everyone found out. The bullying was so bad she had to be homeschooled. Did something like that happen to you?”
Guy snorted. “Not that exactly. And I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Come on, we told you all about your stupid house!”
“That’s in no way a fair trade.” Guy chuckled and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. The white plaster was discoloured. In the gold light of his lamp, it was reminiscent of clouds caught in a sunset. The words were out of him before he knew what he was doing. “I made a horrible mistake and hurt someone I cared about.”
“Go on.” Tiff’s cheeky smile was equal parts infuriating and funny.
Guy shook his head. “You kids live locally, don’t you?”
“About forty minutes away.”
“Right, so you wouldn’t have heard the story. It was all over my local newspaper, though.” Guy’s smile faded as he rubbed at the faint tan line where his engagement ring had once rested. “I had a fiancée called Savannah. We were in love. For a while, I thought she might actually be my soulmate, if you believe in such a thing. She was perfect—sweet and smart and one of the kindest people you’d ever meet. But… well, I didn’t have much money, and my work contract was coming to an end. The bills were growing, and it was stressing me out. I—” It took a lot of effort to say the words. “I’ve always had a problem with my temper. I get angry easily. Never violent. I don’t hit people or anything. I just kind of… blow up and scream a bunch and have to apologise afterwards.”
Tiff squinted at him. “You don’t look like an angry sort of person.”
“Thanks, I guess?” He pulled a face. “You don’t look like the sort of kid who’d be interested in a place like Rookward.”
“Fair enough.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’d been working on my temper. I saw a counsellor for a while when I could afford it. And Savannah was really understanding and patient, even though I knew her family didn’t like me.”
“So what happened?” Tiff, impatient, drummed her fingers on the table.
Blake had zoned out of the conversation and was picking dirt out from under his nails. Guy was tempted to laugh again. Poor kid just wanted a make-out sessio
n. Now he’s stuck hearing my life story.
“I found a half-empty bottle of vitamins in Savannah’s purse. ‘Specially formulated for the first trimester of pregnancy.’” Guy flexed his shoulders as a shiver of stress—a leftover echo from the memory—crawled over him. “She’d been keeping it a secret. We didn’t have much money, and she was scared I’d be angry. Well, she wasn’t wrong. I… I yelled at her. I wasn’t even angry about the baby. I just felt furious that she hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me.” Smiling hurt. “Ironic, huh?”
“Did you want her to get rid of it?”
“No. Absolutely not. I wanted to be a father. The… the timing was bad, but we would have made it work. Somehow. But I exploded like the idiot I am, and Savannah stormed off rather than listen to me yell. I realised I needed to get out of the house—that was one of the coping methods the counsellor suggested, just remove myself from the situation—so I got in the car to go for a drive.” The pain felt like molten lava, blindingly hot and boiling out of his stomach to burn his throat. “I didn’t realise she’d come out of the house. I didn’t see her behind the car. I was so angry I hadn’t checked the mirror—I hit her—”
The thud. The cry. The rush of horror. The lurch as he tried to stop the car from rolling back over her. They’d replayed through Guy’s dreams for weeks after it, each time just as raw, awful, and unforgivable as reality. Metallic blood seeped across his tongue where he’d bitten it without realising. “She lived. The baby, too, by some miracle. They’re worried it will be affected, though. Were worried—it would have been born a few weeks ago—I don’t know if…”
Tiff bent low over the table, chin resting on her forearms. She’d been mercifully quiet while he told his story in broken fragments, almost as though she’d known he needed to share it. “Is that why you need to leave town? You’re scared of bumping into her on the street?”
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 8